


The way you shine like truth

by Streeetch



Category: Holby City
Genre: Angst, F/F, Post-Break Up, berena - Freeform, fix, hopeful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-18 14:13:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16996533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Streeetch/pseuds/Streeetch
Summary: A week after the break up, Serena is working long hours to avoid dealing with what her life has become. She comes out of theatre to find a drunken rant of a voicemail from Bernie on her phone and doesn’t know how to respond.





	The way you shine like truth

**Author's Note:**

> This is a half formed fix - a story I don’t have the time to write in full. But cannon felt so narratively uneven my brain just couldn’t leave it alone. If someone else wants to take this and run with it, please be my guest. 
> 
> Title comes from Frank Turner’s “The Way I Tend to Be”

A week after the Jason’s wedding, Serena has volunteered to work all the night shifts over the Christmas and new year period. She’s hoping exhaustion and busy shifts will help stop her thinking. 

She comes out of theatre and there’s a voicemail on her phone from Bernie. She is clearly blind drunk and ranting; calling out Serena for cheating on her, and with a younger woman over whom she has oversight (she even tells her that she’s no better than Edward in her behaviour). 

Serena can hear the clink of more booze being poured as Bernie continues. Asks why their timing couldn’t have been better? Whether Serena was supposed to have been her blessing for being a ‘brave soldier’ or her punishment for what she did to Marcus... 

She goes on to list grievances large and small. Says she wasn’t a perfect partner, but she would have tried. And who was Serena to tell Bernie who she was and was not?! “Fucking bins and slippers and bloody swings”. Did Serena really not know her at all? “Serena. Wendy. Campbell. Hah. Campbell by name Campbell by nature”. “Maybe”, she goes on “I would have been better off meeting Serena McKinnie. Serena Wendy McKinnie. Serena McKinnie-Wolfe. Serena Wolfe”. At this point Serena can hear the sound of a small box clicking shut and being hurled across the room. 

There is a long pause. Heaving breaths. Then the phone goes dead. 

=====

Serena doesn’t know what to do or how to respond. So she doesn’t. Just let’s the words swirl round and round in her head. On Boxing Day she’s grabbing a coffee at a semi deserted Pulses when she hears Cameron’s voice. He’s talking to Lofty and Dom as they all exit the lift. Serena ducks behind a pillar, can’t bear to face him; not knowing what his mother did and didn’t tell him about why they broke up and why she’s off half way around the world from her children again. 

=====

December 29th Serena enters her office to find a voicemail from Bernie on her phone. Serena can’t face having to listen to another accusatory message when she still has half a shift to go, so puts the phone into her bag as though it were a live hand grenade that might go off with the slightest wrong move. She waits until the end of her shift. Drives home and then, parked outside the house, she gathers her courage and presses her phone to access her messages. 

“Hi. It’s me. Bernie. I’m glad I got your voicemail. Not sure what I’d have done if you’d picked up. Or if someone else had.... sorry. That’s not fair”. 

“I’m just calling to apologise for the other night. I’m sure you realised that I wasn’t at my best. I can’t remember precisely what I said, for obvious reasons... but the snippets that keep coming back to me at odd moments are far from kind. I’m sorry about that. Probably should have left it well alone, snuck out of Albie’s with my salute to you and deleted your number”.

“But then I do want to be able to check up on you now and then. See that you’re okay. I just probably shouldn’t speak to you for a while whilst I sort myself out. The day after I left that message - sorry again- I concluded that perhaps I should finally try and nail that whole communications and feelings nonsense, so I decided to bite the bullet and speak to someone. So yep, Bernie Wolfe has got herself a therapist. You’d be so proud of your Major.... sorry. Sorry. Just slipped out. Anyway, I wanted to apologise and tell you not to worry about me. I will be fine. The therapist - she said I should say ‘I will be fine’ rather than ‘I am fine’ when I didn’t actually mean it. So you see, I’m learning. “

“One other pearl of wisdom from the good doctor was that I probably shouldn’t have implied to you that I had someone waiting in the wings out in Nairobi. That it was a defence mechanism for my wounded pride. ‘To spare my blushes’ - you know how that goes eh, Campbell...” 

“Anyway this is probably longer than the terribly rude message I left you but I’m sorry and it won’t happen again. Happy Christmas, Serena and please give my love to Jason, Greta and Gwinnie. I sent gifts to them via Cameron so hopefully they arrived. Bye then. I... er, bye” 

=====

Serena sends a text to Bernie in response. 

“GOT YOUR VOICEMAIL. IM SURE JASON ET AL VERY GRATEFUL FOR GIFTS. HAVENT SEEN THEM WHILST IVE BEEN ON NIGHTS. WILL SEE THEM TOMORROW AND PASS ON YOUR LOVE. 

JUST REALISED I DONT KNOW TIME IN NAIROBI. SORRY IF MSG WOKE YOU. 

DONT WORRY ABOUT YOUR PREVIOUS VOICEMAIL. IVE LEFT A FEW DRUNKEN RANTS IN MY TIME. AND - AS WERE MINE TO EDWARD - THOROUGHLY DESERVED. 

GLAD YOU HAVE THERAPIST TO TALK TO; IT CAN HELP. DID FOR ME IN FRANCE AFTER ELLIE. PERHAPS SHE CAN RECOMMEND A UK BASED COLLEAGUE FOR AN IDIOT LIKE ME. 

BIT GLAD ABOUT THE WAITING IN THE WINGS BIT. NO RIGHT TO BE, I KNOW. IN THE SAME SPIRIT YOU SHOULD KNOW RIC AGREED TO TAKE OVER LEAHS TRAINING AND I HAVE NOTHING MORE TO DO WITH HER. NO EXCUSES BUT MY BEHAVIOUR SHOWED ME IM NOT THE PERSON I THOUGHT I WAS - OR THAT YOU DESERVED- AND I NEED HEADSPACE TO FIGURE OUT WHATS WHAT. 

IM ON NIGHTS FOR ANOTHER WEEK SO HAVE A HAPPY NEW YEAR BERNIE. HOPE 2019 TREATS YOU KINDLY. S X

=====

Serena ploughs on with her ‘punishment’ shifts. She decides to try and pull a double on the anniversary of Eleanor’s death, but her attempt is thwarted by Henrik’s infuriating memory and kindness. So she goes for a long walk along the river instead. The biting cold dries her tears and the forward movement keeps her from collapsing in a heap as her memories wash over her. Blonde hair -her only child. Blonde hair - her one true love. Yellow. The happiness in her heart. Gone forever, one way or another. 

Eventually she loops back round towards where she left her car - her phone stashed in the glovebox. No one around to mock her feeble crime prevention effort. 

1 Voicemail - Bernie 

Serena steels herself and presses play; 

“Hi Serena, it’s Bernie. I just thought. Well, I know what day this is and... just to let you know I’m thinking of you and Eleanor too. After last year I never thought, well.. anyway just to say I hope you’re okay and with people around... (A DOOR BANGS AND THEN A MALE VOICE) “MADRE! MADRE! YOU KNOW WE’RE HAPPY TO HAVE YOU MOVE IN HERE BUT BASIC HOUSEMATE RULES; YOU CAN’T ORDER TAKE AWAY TO SAVE ON WASHING UP AND THEN LEAVE CONTAINERS STREWN ACROSS THE KITCHEN.... OH, SORRY YOU’RE ON THE PHONE” 

(BANG!)as Bernie drops the phone then “Oh shit” then the phone goes dead. 

Serena stares at her phone. Then grabs the steering wheel with both hands and takes a deep breath. Then laughter bubbles out of her. Then a few tears. She wipes them away, grabs her phone and places a low level menacing phone call to Keller ward and scares the home address for Dr Cameron Dunn out of one of the nurses. 

15 minutes later Serena is outside a red brick terraced house with a ‘To Let’ sign in the front garden propped up by some bins. She takes a deep breath and walks up the path just as the door opens and a barefoot Bernie Wolfe opens the door balancing a pizza box on a food recycling caddy as she props open the door. 

She stops dead in her tracks. The door banging back on the pizza box. Serena drops her head down to look at Bernie’s bare feet on the cold terracotta tiles. As she looks up, Bernie dumps the pizza box and food bin on top of the wheelie bin. Tucks her hair behind her ear, and sighs more than speaks “Serena...”

Serena takes in Bernie’s attire; skinny jeans and an old Harvard hoodie Serena kept for snuggling up in on her bad days. Bernie looks tired, and the lack of tan was clearly evident in comparison to her recent visits. 

Serena puts her shaking hands into her pockets and shrugs her shoulders, affecting nonchalance as she looks down the road at the approaching bin lorry... “This therapist of yours... do you think she might have room in her schedule for another client... and maybe even some couples sessions...?”.


End file.
